


Taraxacum

by WhiskeySoda



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Anal Sex, Chan is a magical plant boy, Chan's secret garden, Changbin is sick, District 9 AU, Fever Dreams, Implied sex pollen, Language of Flowers, Love at First Sight, M/M, Porn With Plot, Rimming, terrarium sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 11:01:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15193352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiskeySoda/pseuds/WhiskeySoda
Summary: "What are you Chan?"Chan blows the dandelion florets into the air and watches them scatter among the garden. Feathery white pods, far more than should come from a single blossom, whirl around them and fill the terrarium like a souvenir snow globe. They fall into Chan’s hair, and across his eyelashes, and against his lips, making him look even more beautiful than he already does."Someone who loves you Changbin."





	Taraxacum

Pressure, unlike anything he’s ever known encircles his chest and crunches his ribs up against his spine. The world goes black.

This is it. It’s finally happening. He’s going to die.

The thought grabs him from behind and embraces him kindly. Makes him feel warm and secure.

It’s quite shocking, and just a little bit rude when his eyes part ever so slightly. Unconsciousness calls him back, and Changbin is eager to obey. Blackness again.

Then a voice interrupts it all once more. A soft disembodied voice speaks to him as if they were old friends. “No Changbin, you’re not going to die.”

Pressure, lighter now around his nose and his mouth makes his skin tingle and itch. Pressure at his wrists makes him open his eyes again and look downward. He’s strapped to a vinyl chair, foul gas pumped into his lungs. A figure looms above him in white.

In the distance, his mother’s voice speaks, “Changbin, this is for your own good.”

Pressure, and then a tube is jammed down his throat.

Changbin loses consciousness again, but the pain doesn’t fade. It tugs at the edges of the place where darkness meets light.

When his head lolls to the side, he’s joined in the darkness by another person. The stranger’s lips are pursed tight in an expression that seems stuck somewhere between concentration and concern. “Changbin,” his voice cracks.

In that moment, Changbin is torn from the solitary hospital room wherein he’s spent most of his life. He’s made aware once more that there are people in this world, not just those who suffer and those who are burdened by caregiving.

“Changbin, are you going to die?”

“No,” Changbin’s head lolls to the side so that he can meet the stranger’s gaze. “I’ve decided not to, so I won’t.” However, it’s difficult to for him to force certainty into his voice as it waivers and cracks. In the distance he can hear the pneumatic heave of respirators, and the discordant rhythm of medical devices. He’s going to be forced to deal with that choice far sooner than he’d like.

“Why not?”

He’s unable to answer.

* * *

Inadequacy washes over him and clings to his skin like thick residue of medical grade soap. When Changbin isn’t trying to repulse by showing off his leaking wounds to passersby, he’s trying to endear. To an extent it’s easy…well, it’s easier than being repulsive. All he has to do is absentmindedly reach his hand outside of the metal frame of his wheelchair and pluck up a few daises. All he has to do is tell the nurses that they look pretty. All he needs to do is tell them he needs someone to sit with him, and they get a break. These interactions yield reciprocity, of course. For his charms he is awarded a second slice of cake with dinner, or a room facing the city, for what good that is when the smog shrouds it all from view.

There’s nothing genuine waiting for him on the other side of his most suave, “miss nurse.” Changbin also knows that these interactions are somehow worse than transactional. They’re a hollow form of altruism.  After all, he’s probably dying.

* * *

Warmth washes over his body in dreams, and that is what they must be. When Changbin is with his unnamed friend, he feels the same kind of confidence that is possessed by people that come and go freely. That confidence is something thick and intangible. He’s never seemed to genuinely possess that confidence, only imitate it.

“You’re stuck” A boy sits at his bedside, and rubs the skin on his inner forearm tenderly.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Changbin responds looking at the IV tube inserted into his arm over the mask clasped to his nose.

With a wave of his hand, the IV tube, the instruments, and the hospital itself are gone.

“Come with me,” the boy extends his hand to Changbin. The boy’s smile is so large that it seeps into his features, and scrunches up his shoulders. “You never answered me.”

The scenery around them transforms from blank and nondescript to that of Changbin’s old school. He hasn’t been here for years, would’ve moved onto high school by now had he been normal. But he knows that if he went down this main hallway past Mrs. Park’s homeroom class, and then past the library, they’d be in the music room.

“Never answered what?” Changbin’s fingers fiddle with the dial of a combination lock on a locker. It opens, and hundreds of prescription pill canisters tumble out.

So, the scenery changes once again. Now, Changbin stands with the stranger in a field of green and brown patched grass. The sky is stained pink by the setting sun. In the air, millions of fluffy seed pods float through the air like snow in December.

The stranger extends cupped hands to the sky to catch the seeds, and so Chanbgin does the same. “Why you chose not to die.”

“You told me I wasn’t going to.”

“But what’s really keeping you?”

Changbin falters with an answer. “Waiting I guess.” Then after a moment, he whips it back around. “Why are you here?”

In the stranger’s hand, a purple flower with a large bulbous yellow crown appears. “Because,” the boy says earnestly. “I love you.”

The flower vanishes from the stranger’s hand. Changbin looks down at his own hand only to see the flower tucked into his closed fist.

When Changbin wakes, he’s covered in sweat. The monitor strapped to his chest makes all sorts of erratic noises, and so he knows that he has very little time before the medical team moves in. He tugs the sensors from his body, and as he moves a small purple flower falls into the sheets.

When he looks up the name of the flower online, he finds that it’s called _bittersweet._

* * *

 

It’s always serious when they send grandmother in, more so when she comes up to his room instead of sending for him in her big luxury car. The magnitude of _just_ how bad it is becomes clear when she doesn’t so much as flinch at the empty cans of soda on his desk and the laundry spilled on the floor mere inches from the hamper.

Today she’s dressed _casually_ that is to say her heels are no higher than two inches and chunky. The scarf around her neck is undoubtedly silk. He likes the solid shade of emerald green because it is so different from the usual trademarked patterns that she typically wears.

“Changbin,” she carefully toes out of her chunky heels and sits upon his mattress. “Changbin,” she speaks again when he doesn’t look up from the monitor right away. “Changbin your parents want you to consider another treatment.”

And with that the air is sucked out of the room. Changbin’s lungs, damaged and shriveled, gasp for air. He peels the headphones that frame his face away. “Must be bad if they brought you in for the heavy lifting.”

“I won’t lie to you.” Grandma looks at him as if she feels guilty, but Changbin doesn’t have a choice and neither does she. His parents have already decided. “it’s unconventional.”

* * *

 

Unpleasant is something that Changbin is used to. Each day, acerbic medication coats the back of his throat and his lungs leaving a sickening drip in the back of his throat. Pills make him nauseous, to the point that he’s given up on eating much of anything at all. Caustic topical creams coat his skin, all of this done in the name of making him better.

Painful is something that Changbin is also used to. There are many nights he wheezes so hard that his chest aches. He’s pulled his own IV out more times than he can count.

Changbin is used to strange too. While everyone else went on the middle school graduation trip, mom sent him to a health resort in an old salt mine where the medication came in the form of crystals and candles.

But nothing could prepare him for this.

“You may find it best to remove your clothes before entering the capsule,” the nurse deadpans while looking at Changbin over silver, wire rimmed glasses.

“If you wanted to see just ask.”

Changbin’s got the hem of his shirt almost over his head when he hears the door unlatch. The nurses’ tone remains dry and unchanged. “They won’t be needed, you’ll have everything you need in the capsule.”

The vaulted door is opened for Changbin. Even in the absence of the nurse, he opts to leave his clothes on.

* * *

 

White light burns so strongly, and so pervasively, that Changbin cannot be certain if it is the glare of the sun or his own anger, which certainly rivals the heat of the sun. The light scorches his eyes, fills his skull, and pounds on his temples from the inside.

Changbin falls to his knees to find that the environment is lush with plants. Through parted eyes he can see dense emerald green moss between his fingers. The feeling against his toes is like plush carpet. Lush, large leaves fill in every inch of space offering promise of shelter from the harsh white light.

In the twisted mass of leaves, blooming flowers become jewels sewn into a tapestry before him. The scene before him would be beautiful, were he able to truly look upon it.

The burning white light forces his eyes shut. The air is so thick it becomes tangible, and he reaches for fistfuls of it as he writhes upon the ground. Damp sweat rolls down his back and along his hairline into his eyes. Each breath is labored.

A single thought is branded into the back of his mind, _this is supposed to heal me?_

Changbin crawls along the moss-covered floor making notes of fruits and vines until his hand brushes against thick, scorching hot glass that keeps him contained. Soon the heat steals what is left of his strength making it impossible to move further, even to retreat underneath leaves.

Sooner than he’d like to admit, the nurse’s words come back to him and press into his throbbing temples, “you may find it easier to remove your clothes.”

Somehow, Changbin manages to writhe out of his soaked through shirt. He keeps his pants on, because he knows that he’s being monitored, and he demands a single shred of dignity here.

His stubbornness is short lived. All too soon is pants are discarded too. Slick with sweat and desperate for water, Changbin finds himself pinned to the moss floor by a heavy an unseen hand. The tightness in his chest and the dry wheezing feeling that he is so accustomed to is replaced by rattling wet coughs. They squeeze his chest tight until his whole body aches. When his body can endure no more he turns to his side and cough-vomits up a thick yellow green substance onto the moss.

Unconsciousness bathes his distressed and exhausted body, but offers no reprieve. Changbin closes his eyes to heat and light, and wakes to darkness. His teeth chatter so violently that he would not he shocked if they shattered like fine china within his mouth.  

Fortunately, consciousness slips from him again.

When he wakes this time…well lucidity is such a goddam liar. He’s used to his brain painting pretty pictures only to have reality rip it to shreds, but this has got to be the worst.

Purple and pink dappled light now fill his vision. His back is soaked with sweat and the natural condensation which builds against the moss, but the cold is gone and the heat is abated.

A warm hand touches his cheek. “There we go.” The voice is both strange and familiar to him, as if they’ve spoken to one another before. “Wake up now.”

In the familiarity, Changbin finds peace. Turning his head into a broad, bare chest, Changbin can feel the weight of unconsciousness tug at his vision again. Black encroaches on the purple pink of the sky. Let him be taken by it.

Whether it is due to the thick air, or the ache in his body, this place has broken him. He takes back his longstanding vow not to die.

A hand runs down Changbin’s spine slowly touching each nodule and flattening out ward tracing his ribs. Changbin rocks into the touch, because this is a dream where he will drown within his own disinhibition.

“Don’t be a baby wake up,” soft and hot syllables are puffed into his ear. It makes his already steamed skin hotter still. Makes him burn in ways that he’d rather not feel when his body aches and his head throbs.

Dying is strange.

 Yet, the voice and the touch edge out the pain and yield a faint, but resilient pleasure. Makes him feel that his body is capable of something other than hurt.

“This is my dream.” Changbin mumbles. “I don’t have to.”

“This is my reality. I say that you do. Anyway.” The stranger pauses. “You’ll feel better if you eat something.”

“No.” His stomach is sour and the only thing that will ease it is touch.

“Something tells me you’ll hate this worse.”

Contact between him and the stranger is broken for a moment, and in that moment there is the sound of a crunch. Strange rhythmic sounds follow, and Changbin can only liken it to chewing.

In the absence of that touch, Changbin rocks his hips into the damp air. He’s hard and shameless, and wants to feel something, anything other than pain before he dies.

As if his thoughts were being torn from the privacy of his mind, the stranger sighs. “But if you don’t eat something now you’ll die.”

* * *

 

Changbin hates his stupid fucking brain. He hates how everything he knows is tainted by visceral awareness that only comes from nineteen years of his body doing extremely weird and extremely gross shit constantly. He hates how his first good sex dream, probably his dying dream, comes with an added layer of heat stroke (or was it hypothermia) addled weirdness.

But his dream marches on despite his own anger and disgust. Silken soft lips, the kind that everyone dreams of kissing, press against his. Pulpy fruit is passed from the stranger’s mouth into his own. Syrupy sweet fruit coats his tongue and makes his tongue feel thick. Changbin greedily accepts what he’s given, mouthful after mouthful until the pain dissipates slowly from his body. The warmth that radiates on his skin burns from within now. Pain edged out by arousal from the stranger’s touch.

For the first time, he feels as if his damaged body were capable of singing and dancing. In reality, all he can do is push his tongue back against the stranger’s. As he is fed more and more fruit, he chases not the sweet flavor, but the push and brush of lips against his own.

His partner never _truly_ returns the touch that he craves, only teases. He laps stray bits of pulp from his lower lip, or languidly traces the roof of his mouth with his tongue. It would be irritating, if it didn’t feel so good. It is impossible to know how long this goes on. Seconds, minutes, or hours, it is still agony when Changbin is rutting against him, and the stranger is pulling back.

The stranger pushes Changbin’s hair away from his face. In an instant, it’s further solidified that this must be a dream. In front of him, touching him, kissing him with nectar breath, is the boy that has walked beside him in dreams for years.

“Changbin,” and the laughter that accompanies his name is deep and dark like the black coffee Changbin used to drink to soothe the pain in his throat. Kind eyes smile at him, and it is almost strange how the expression is not of ire or disappointment, but something grand. “You’re making the whole “saving your life” thing really difficult.”

* * *

 

“Ow,” Changbin pinches his arm for what must be the seventh time, his skin is already blossoming in purple read. “Ow,” he repeats again.

“I’m telling you,” his companion, the stranger, the dream that keeps him company….Chan speaks softly now. “This is all very real.”

“No, it isn’t” Changbin stops abusing himself to look at Chan. “Like you understand why it can’t be real, right? First, of all, you’re telling me all this light is coming from the sun.” Changbin rolls his eyes at the sheer absurdity. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen the sun through the smog? Not to mention,” Changbin looks at Chan. No, he _really_ looks at Chan.  He stands before him now bare from the hips upward. Sweat from the sun beads across his stomach and moves when his muscles ripple and flutter with his breath. Strong arms hold him upright when wave after wave of dizziness crash over Changbin, as if he’s nothing.

Looking upon him so freely, and with such hunger, only blurs the line between dream and reality. “I’ve dreamt of you. Not every night, but I’ve seen you so much over the years. Why would this be real?”

“I don’t know what to say.” Chan responds honestly. “I’ve dreamed of you too Changbin,” and it sounds like a confession, not a fact. “Even when I was young.”

For a moment, the magnitude of what has been spoken between them hangs thick like the humid air. All they can do is look upon one another in close scrutiny. The ridges of their irises, the flutter of their eyelashes, and the slow, uneven heaves of their chests speak far more than they could with words. In those actions a thousand questions are exchanged between them, but few answers are given.

Changbin wants to seal the distance between them and have Chan’s lips on his again. In the absence of passing fruit between them, his chest tightens and his feet stall.

Yet the silence is deafening, and the urgency grows with each passing second. He has to know. So Chagbin finally shatters the silence to pieces. He’s good at disrupting quiet hours and waking those in near coma status. He offers a question that maybe, just maybe Chan can answer.  “Are you sick too?”

Chan laughs, like he feels stupid for not anticipating the question. “No,” he responds. Walking up to a wall of ivy, he raises his hands to it. The ivies spring forth, moving down toward his hand, wrapping around his index finger, and then envelop his palm. From the center springs an ash colored bud.  As if he were watching through a time lapsed camera, Changbin sees a crimson blossom unfurl from the ash green leaves, revealing a perfect blood red rose. “I’m doing just fine.”

Chan hands the flower to Changbin, and Changbin accepts.

The stem is laden with thorns, and pricks the soft pads of his fingers. Changbin drops the flower to the ground on instinct, watching the petals explode outward onto the grass when it hits the ground.  “You’re supposed to help me get better?”

“Yeah, but,” Chan’s gaze settles first on Changbin’s lips, and then his chest, and lower still. For the first time Changbin is both aware and self-conscious of the fact that he’s naked. Chan wets his lips with his tongue before taking Changin’s hand into his own. He maneuvers Chanbgin’s finger so that the pad presses against his lower lip.  Lapping the droplet of blood away, he speaks “I think you’re here to help me too. 

* * *

 

After drinking long draughts of water from a stream, and eating more fruit under his own volition, shame slowly returns to Changbin. Chan helps him find his discarded clothes. When he’s fully clothed once more, a shirt appears around Chan’s chest from thin air.

So, the boy, now a man, from his dreams is here before him in this tropical hell scape. Says he’s going to make him better, like it means nothing that Changbin decided not to die years ago. It’s all too neat, and it’s all too simple. Changbin feels like he’s been chasing something that has never been offered, and it makes anger rise up to the surface like ugly red welts on his skin.

“What are you?” For a moment Changbin regrets asking. The question feels justified when the weight of all of the anger and all of the frustration weighs down upon him. “I always thought you were someone I just made up.” And once he starts speaking his mind it just won’t stop. “I was always jealous of you,” Changbin shouldn’t say it, but he does.

Chan looks upon him with watery eyed confusion. Changbin can only assume he returns Chan’s expression completely. Chan’s mouth quivers and so does Changbin’s. Chan creases his brow, and does Changbin.

It’s easy now to grind his heel into the fallen rose petals in anger and frustration.

“Whenever I saw you in my dreams, I was always jealous because you got to leave.”

“That’s kind of funny,” Chan responds with an acerbic chuckle.

“When I was younger, I really liked to see you. You made me feel less lonely.” Changbin’s voice cracks. Normally, he’d stop speaking and hide his distress. Now? What’s the point. Chan’s seen him at his worst, so crying is nothing.

“I felt so trapped because of you. You told me I wasn’t going to die. I told you I wasn’t going to die, but do you know? Do you know how badly I—”

Changbin is uncertain whether it’s him that balls his fists into Chan’s shirt first, or visa versa. He knows that once Chan starts, he too cannot stop speaking his mind. “When I felt hopeless, I’d see you. When I felt trapped, I’d see you. You pushed me to be better. I’d like to think I did the same for you.” His mouth moves as if there’s more he wants to say, but the words never come.

Changbin’s throat constricts, but a response dries like ash on his tongue. In that moment, his anger is cracked and something like sorrow is replaced with it.

Chan releases the balled fabric of Changbin’s shirt. His large hands cover Changbin’s own, and only then does he realize that despite the heat, his own fingertips were cold. “I don’t think whatever anger you have is really for me Changbin.”

“I’m not angry I’m—” Changbin jerks Chan forward tugging them both down to the ground. He waits for the rattle _thump_ of their bodies slamming to the ground but it never comes. Instead, cool smooth ivy leaves rise up to meet them and break the fall.

The sound of his own heart beating drowns out every thought in his brain. Chan’s gaze never falters, as if he expects not only an answer, but the honest to god truth.

It’s torn from his throat, husked and jagged, “I’m scared.” 

Chan’s expression contains neither anger or malice, yet somehow, it softens even more.

When their lips meet again, it’s more graceless than when Chan was trying to resuscitate him. The kiss is frantic, all teeth and tongue in the wrong places. This time, it isn’t Changbin fueling the awkward and uncomfortable kiss, but Chan desperately holding onto him.

But, Changbin cannot imagine pulling back. Even when their noses mash together and their lips bruise, they stubbornly maintain contact. Unwilling to recalibrate, they greedily drink from one another.

In that moment, it becomes abundantly clear to Changbin that Chan is scared too.

* * *

 

Changbin still doesn’t know what Chan _is._   He has lungs that work in the oppressive heat without laboring. His muscles are well defined, and he can walk through the garden with ease. The entire space cannot be more than nine hundred meters in diameter, containing only a handful of fruit trees, numerous shrubs, and a shallow stream. But if he walks on his own, Changbin has to stop frequently to rest, drink water, or eat fruit given him by Chan.

Changbin pries himself from the bed of moss on which he rests. His movement is too rapid and makes the blood rush from his head. Spots float in front of his vision. “You and I,” Changbin speaks, but pauses when a firm hand grasps around his wrist.

“Let me,” Chan interrupts, bending at the knee and silently offering to carry Changbin.

Changbin awkwardly hops onto Chan’s back. “Are alike. Alike but different.”

“Hm?” Chan grunts as he lifts Changbin off of the ground.

“I decided I wasn’t going to die a long time ago,” Changbin says.

“You told me that,” Chan responds.

But here’s the thing, Changbin’s never spoken that out loud. Only uttered such things in dreams. “That’s never been enough for my parents. They want.” Changbin rests his chin in the crook of Chan’s neck, and smiles with a certain level of satisfaction when Chan’s skin prickles with gooseflesh and the hairs stand on end. “My parents want me to live normally. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“How do you just decide not to die?”

“I heard someone say it.” Changbin scoffs. “So I said it too, and I meant it.” He goes on. “If I were to decide I was going to die, only my parents would be let down. I think my grandmother would understand. But you.”

They reach willow tree that is perfect for laying underneath and hiding from the sun. Chan takes this moment to set him back down onto the ground. His bare feet touch moss, ankles brush against long thin stems of chamomile. His knees shake, and Changbin decides that standing is still far too much effort. As he goes down, he takes special care to drag Chan down to the ground with him. “You can’t really stop healing people can you?”

“You mean, I don’t have a choice…to decide not to die.” Chan allows Changbin to half lay on his body despite the stifling heat, and tuck his head up under his arm. Changbin can feel the slow rise and fall of his breath.

Changbin doesn’t say anything for a moment, instead focusing on the tapered, bell jar shape of the dome under which which they lie. It’s covered in condensation and it drips down upon them constantly. “You do,” Changbin decides after a moment. “You just wouldn’t. You’re too kind.”

“I like helping people,” Chan responds. “It gives me a sense of purpose, but it’s out of my control.”

“Yeah,” Changbin notes.

“No offense, I’m betting your parents are wealthy.”

  
“Yeah,” Changbin repeats himself, guilt gnawing slightly at the base of his spine.

“I want to heal everyone that needs it. Not just people that are brought to me.” Soft like a whisper, Changbin can feel lips press against the crown of his head. “That’s why I choose not to die, if you’re wondering.”

It goes silent between them for a moment, and then Chan says more. Changbin finds it difficult to focus on the sound of his voice when he’s so swept up in the way that his chest rises and falls. “Do you know what these flowers mean?” And then the scent of chamomile is accompanied by the silken feeling of petals against his nose.

“No.” Changbin admits.

“All flowers have meaning. We grow them to say things we don’t have the courage to say.” Chan sighs deeply before speaking again. Changbin can recognize the heavy drag in Chan’s breath. Until recently, his own breath sounded just as labored. “These mean patience.”

* * *

 

“What’s this one from?” Chan brushes his fingers across Changbin’s collar bones, touching at the rough white edges of a scar.

“Pleuro-“ Changbin knows the word, but a stutter comes with the memory. Pain lasts long beyond pills and the bandages, but he’s never quite ready for the residual ache. “Pleurodesis. It’s like when there’s fluid in the lungs.”

“Oh,” Chan shifts them ever so slightly so that he can kiss the wound. “And this one?” His fingers brush along the tender skin of his forearm. In the juncture of his elbow is a nebulous shaped purple mark. “It’s different.”

“My veins are blown dude,” Changbin laughs dry and acerbic. “Junkies have better veins than me.”

“I see,” Chan responds. 

“Why the hell are you wheezing at night?” Changbin asks. Part of him already knows.

“I’m not?” Chan answers a little too quickly.

“I sleep right next to you. You breathe into my ear.”

“You offered to tell me about yours,” Chan says, brushing his hand down Changbin’s chest. Slowly, purposefully, he rests his hand right on top of the jagged scar that runs parallel to his sternum.

“You didn’t offer?”

“Right,” Chan responds.

Chan seems to keep so many secrets from him. What he is. Why his chest seems to rattle more, and Changbin’s rattles less. Maybe it isn’t a secret if Chan doesn’t _truly_ know the answer.

“I used to like them a lot,” Changbin offers. “They grossed people out. You know? Made them uncomfortable. Now?” It seems pointless if he’s at the mercy of someone to administer medication or dress his wounds. “Not so much.”

“I like them,” Chan supplies. He rolls them so that Changbin’s back rests against the ground. Chan lifts up his shirt and places a kiss across the deepest scar.

“I feel like they give power to people that don’t deserve it. Doctors. My parents.”

“Your body is your own here Changbin.”

* * *

 

“Where are we?” Changbin’s hands press against the glass, and he’s genuinely surprised when Chan responds. He’s never anything other than cryptic whenever he asks anything personal.

“I’m not sure,” Chan begins. Standing next to Changbin, he too places his hands against the glass. There’s nothing to be seen on the other side, save the sprawling emptiness of the night sky. During the day they can see the sun, and occasionally clouds. Now? They stand underneath a canopy of stars accented by the crisp gibbous moon.

“In the city, everything is covered in smog,” Changbin adds.

“I think we’re up high somewhere,” Chan adds. “I’m pretty certain there’s a door...” Chan points his index finger tracing along the line of the stream. “Over there.” His fingers stops just near Changbin’s favorite willow tree.

Chan’s statement shakes the haze that’s clouded his brain away.  He’s not certain how long he’s been here but at some point, his desire to leave was replaced by the strong desire to stay. Now, a third option has been presented before him. Leave, with Chan.

Chan turns back to the curved barrier that keeps them both inside. “Bet you thought this was glass.”

“Yeah,” Changbin breathes as the glass illuminates under Chan’s touch with green and blue light.

“It’s some kind of cyber-mesh. Not a tangible barrier. All code and electric, but code can be manipulated you know?”

Changbin does. He’s been cracking into things he shouldn’t have ever since his parents put a tablet in his lap in the pediatric ward.

“Do you know what I like to do?”

“Use the intranet to project porn onto the glass?” 

“No, but we should,” Chan responds with a laugh.

Chan’s fingers glide over the lights, and from Chan’s touch spring forth sounds that are unlike anything Changbin has ever heard before.  The notes sound as if they bubble up from the glass. Light and airy, they pop against Changbin’s skin and make him smile. Words come easily to him. “Spreads through my cells like a poison, when I become sensitive to exasperation. Even without an antidote, live with positive thoughts is my motto.”

As he lingers somewhere between an angry rant and a joyous song, he can feel the moss dip beneath his body, drawing him in closer. Can hear the ivies grow, and cautiously touch along his ankles and thighs where he sits upon the moss.

It’s strange. Chan will interrupt him mid-sentence for a kiss, but it feels more intimate when he touches Changbin with crawling stems and caressing leaves.

The words and the rhymes keep coming until Changbin’s lungs burn and his throat aches. When he falters, Chan is right there to pick up where he left off.

When Chan sings, his voice doesn’t drown out Changbin’s, but compliments him. “It comforts me, makes me want to fly.” Where Changbin’s tone is rasped and agonized, Chan’s flows smoothly, soothing out the splintered sounds of Changbin’s voice.

Changbin approaches the glass without thinking, and his fingers glide over a series of neon pink and blue circles. His body tightens, bracing for a cacophony to break Chan’s melody, but it never comes. The sound shifts and changes, with the melody becoming richer. With the graze of his fingers, a high-pitched noise, similar to that of a flute accents the beat.

As Changbin becomes lost in watching his own fingers glide over the glass, he fails to notice that Chan leaves his spot beside him. Changbin only notices the change in the melody when he feels the drag of fabric against fabric. In the dense, tropical air it’s almost impossible to tease out the feeling of Chan’s breath against his skin, and condensation thick in the air, but the pressure of lips against the juncture of his neck is unmistakable.

“Changbin,” Chan breathes into the shell of his ear, and Changbin can feel it in each node of his spine. “The first thing you said to me, when we met…What if you’re right?”

 Chan doesn’t have to finish the sentence for Changbin to know what it is that he asks. The pungent scent of citrus lingers in the air. His lips feel the same kind of rubbed raw-tingle burn feeling he gets whenever he eats berries fresh off of the vine.  It’s real. Every single bit of it. But Chan asks anyway, “what if this is all a dream?”

Changbin turns ever so slightly, as much as Chan will allow when he’s pinned against the glass. When their lips meet, it’s unlike before. Removed from the guise of lapping away sticky fruit juice, the lackadaisical manner in which they’ve kissed in the past is discarded like fruit husks into the grass.

Chan’s touch is always gentle. Now, his lips press so hard against Changbin’s that they will surely bruise. Changbin is so frequently fatigued that he usually does little more than part his lips for Chan. Now, he presses his tongue into Chan’s mouth fiercely.

When Chan moves to break the kiss, Changbin finds strength he did not know he possessed. He holds his breath and presses forward, catching Chan’s lower lip between his teeth until it bruises like overripe fruit against his teeth. Chan whimpers softly in a strange mixture of pain and vulnerability.

Changbin has known from the very night Chan found him lying in the grass that vulnerability itself is a strange mixture of both pleasure and pain.

“If it’s a dream,” Changbin knows that the words that come next will make his face flush hot with embarrassment, but they tumble out anyway.

Chan just does it for him like that, inflates him with more confidence than he ever got flirting with a rookie nurse on night shift, or chatting with people on the internet. Changbin turns fully now so that his own body is flush with Chan’s. “Then you should do whatever you want.”

“And if it’s real?” Chan asks.

Even through clothing, Changbin can feel Chan’s cock pressed against his hip. All it does is inflate that big stupid balloon of self-confidence that pumps up underneath his throat even more. “Do what you want anyway.” He threads his fingers through Chan’s hair, and for a moment time stands still.

That strange pocket of hot air…the confidence in his chest, neither forces him to demand control, nor does it deflate and make him retreat. Wedged between Chan and glass, he feels like a specimen on display. “Because I want you to do that too.”

Changbin all but melts into the hands that cup his face. Chan works a hand up underneath his shirt and smooths away the cold clammy nervousness that clings to Changbin’s skin. 

Changbin is used to having pain in his scars. There are always places that do not heal, phantom pain, and new problems that spring forth from old marks. This different. Everywhere Chan touches he knows there is a scar branding his skin. Everywhere Chan touches leaves patches of hot want upon his skin.

When his hands are gone, all the damaged places on his body ache.

Chan’s hand catches against the fabric, and in an instant the fabric is split, but not torn. Parted by the grace of Chan’s hand he casts the garment aside. For Changbin, reciprocity is not so graceful. He tugs at the hem of Chan’s shirt, and has to interrupt fervent kisses to pull his shirt off.

When skin touches skin, the heat of the terrarium is dwarfed by their bodies, and they both burn so brightly. Changbin finds that he loves to graze his teeth over the pulsing tendons of Chan’s neck and the juncture where his shoulder meets his neck.

Changbin knows that his actions are sloppy, but the sounds that Chan makes spurn him on.

Free roam over Chan’s body is quick lived as Chan pins his arms to the glass. A cacophony of discordant, yet beautiful sound emits from the buttons. When Chan’s mouth connects with his skin, it is as if everything Changbin has known is written anew.

His skin can feel more than pain. His body endure more than caustic medication and violent procedure. Chan handles him as if he were something strong, wonderful, and worthy of being tested. Teeth graze against his nipples, teasing them to hardness. Then, Chan soothes the abrasion right away with his tongue. Chan looks upon his scarred body with the same kind of tenderness he looks at his flowers.

“Changbin,” his name sounds like a confession on Chan’s breath. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted this?”

Changbin cannot. Whatever it was that he liked in the curve of Chan’s smile and the curve of his hips, he couldn’t articulate until he was underneath him in the terrarium. But when it burned, it burned full force. “Show me.” He captures Chan’s mouth in another kiss.

Chan makes their pants fall away.

“Keep showing me,” Changbin only spurns him on.

And show him Chan does. Fingers grasp around his cock. Chan sounds…has always contained the natural and defiant confidence of someone who came and went freely. It haunted him in his dreams, and makes his toes curl in real life. Chan’s voice is an act of defiance. Confidant as if he could come and go, even when he was trapped,“yours is different.”

Somehow through the thick fog of Changbin’s mind and the thick fog of the terrarium, he pulls himself from the crook of Chan’s neck and looks downward. As Chan’s hand fists both of their cocks, he watches in rapt fascination as the tip of Chan’s cock disappears and reappears beneath foreskin. “Yours is so cute,” Changbin slurs as if he’s drunk on codeine cough syrup.

Chan’s response is anything but cute. His fingertips drag down Changbin cock, making Changbin whimper. The action is repeated until Changbin can feel heat pool in his gut and his toes curl. When he’s certain he’s going to pop, Chan’s touch becomes feather light, and then pulls away completely.  

“Fuck, Chan,” and he’s scratching at Chan’s arms, becoming that person, he doesn’t wanna be, frail and needy. “Just let me-“

“Alright,” Chan looks upon him with half lidded eyes heavy with affection and simply gives him what he wants. Long firm strokes from root to tip, root to tip, and he’s spilling into Chan’s hand.

“Chan, oh my god.” Changbin rests his sweat slicked forehead against Chan’s.

“Was that the first time you’ve done this with someone?”

Changbin doesn’t answer with words. It’s obvious. With their foreheads mashed together, the kiss between them is sloppy. Their noses bump together. The pressure on the bridge of his nose is uncomfortable until one of them, probably Chan, has the wonderful idea to cock his head to the side. Both of them moan into the kiss, puffs of hot breath exchanged with the press of their tongues. Each action pushes coherence further from Changbin’s mind.

 A firm hand on his hip turns Changbin around once more. Cool glass contrasts with hot skin as Chan splays a hand across the small of his back.

Changbin is already hard again.

Chan reaches to the right and grabs a chartreuse fluted blossom from the surrounding foliage. Changbin is almost certain that such a bush did not exist there moments ago. Nevertheless, Chan crushes it in his hand, and smears the nectar across Changbin’s thighs, cock, and entrance until he’s dripping with moisture and _pleading_ with Chan. “Hurry,” and “please,” and words abandoned mid syllable when Chan takes him into his hand and circles the tip of his cock.

Changbin has not been trapped underneath the glass dome long, but he’s been here with Chan long enough to understand that very few things here hold a single purpose. Everywhere that Chan has spread the viscous liquid tingles now, so much so that the breeze makes his skin pique with gooseflesh and his cock twitch in response.

Chan’s finger teases at his entrance, and enters him with minimal resistance. Drugs have addled his body for far too long. He understands how they blur the line between reality and hallucination. There’s a part of him who wants to feel everything as it is, regardless of whether or not it is pleasurable.

“Chan, you’re being a bastard.”

“And you’re being greedy.”

But who is _really_ being greedy? Changbin can feel Chan’s cock press against his ass as he fingers him. Chan moves like doesn’t know that he’s had a tube of KY jelly stashed underneath his bed at home since he was sixteen. But Chan has seen everything. “You can go faster.”

“I wanna make sure, Changbin.” Another finger, and Chan rotates his wrist. _Finally,_ Chan caresses just the right spot.

This too becomes competitive, if not greedy. The way that Chan touches him with a benign persistence that lets Changbin know that it’s not just about making sure that he’s ready. All too soon, he can feel it building inside again. With each brush of Chan’s fingers, he’s drawn closer and closer.

It feels so much better than the frantic feeling of his own fingers crammed inside. There is no ache from crooking his wrist to hit just the right spot. There is no silent cursing that his fingers are too short.

“You’re still a bastard,” is spat through his clenched teeth as Changbin cums again. His whole body throbs with overstimulation. The simplest of touches, fingers brushing up against his neck or a hand at his hip, feel like hot brands against his skin, but Changbin is addicted. “Satisfied?” and it takes so much energy to smirk at Chan when he’s knock kneed and fucked out.

“If you are.”

With Chan’s hands upon his hips and Changbin bracing himself against glass, Chan presses into him so slowly that time seems to stand still. He can feel each breath that he takes in unison with Chan. He can feel each twitch of Chan’s cock deep inside, and how it responds to each clench-squeeze of his own body. 

The low moan torn from Chan’s throat sounds better than any music. The noise is unashamed and almost drowns out the obscene sound of skin slapping against skin.

Chan puts his hand over Changbin’s, which is pressed up against the glass. 

Changbin responds, pushing back against the addictive drag-burn of Chan’s cock.

 Chan has never treated him as if he were weak. Now, he tests the very limits of what Changbin is capable of. His calves burn from rising up to meet Chan thrust for thrust. Wrung out with pleasure, but never allowed to go soft, he’s pulled relentlessly towards another orgasm.

Everything burns in the very best kind of way.

Chan pulls words from the air as if they were nothing and whispers them into his ear. Like he doesn’t even know that he’s waited a lifetime to hear them. “You’re so pretty.” And, “Perfect.” And “I love these about you,” as he traces his finger down a long scar white on the edges and pink in the middle.

Pleasure, low and thunderous starts at the root of his cock, fans out across his stomach, wraps around his body, and is multiplied in the place where he and Chan are joined.

“I love you,” has been spoken to him by Chan before, but when he says it this time it truly sounds like a confession.

Chan whimpers in his ear, and that’s all the warning he gets. A final, powerful roll of his hips and Chan’s finally cumming too, as if he’d finally given himself permission. and a final, powerful roll of his hips. Fingers close around his cock, and Changbin cums against the glass wall of the terrarium.

* * *

 

Bodies spread across the moss, for a moment, Changbin feels at peace. Lying down like this, his body does not fight the oppressive gravity of the thick air. In the dark of the night, the sun does not anger his pale skin.

At night, they can see the stars through the domed glass lid.

“Do you do this for everyone?” Rancor tinges his voice, but he silently prays that the answer is no. “Part of the prescription?”  His head rests against Chan’s chest. He can feel the soft tickle of armpit hair against his shoulder, and he finds the musky scent of Chan’s body addictive.

“No, Changbin,” and he can feel him smile against his skin as he traces his entrance and press against him. “It’s special with you.”

It goes silent for a moment between them. Light of the moon catches Changbin’s body, and that’s when he notices that the skin along his forearm is smooth.

Not marked by blown veins.

Not scarred by surgical marks.

Reluctantly, he pulls his body away from Chan’s. In the dark, it’s difficult to see. But he doesn’t have to see to know that his skin feels smooth where it was once hardened and uneven.

“My scars are gone.”

Chan sucks in air. Uncertain of what to say, he has to say something.

“I think they’re beautiful, but I know you that they bring you so much pain.”

“Thank you,” Changbin says softly. “Thank you so much.”

* * *

 

Somewhere between long days pinned to the moss by the heat, and long nights pressed against glass by Chan, Changbin abandons the person he was before he entered the terrarium. His body, thin and angular grows each day from the nourishment of sweet pulp laden fruits.

It happens slowly. First, he is able to traverse the entire enclosure without stopping to rest. Next, he notices the way that the muscles in his calves tighten. Then, the muscles in his chest and his arms grow. Color rises to his skin.

While his body grows and molds into some idealistic form he never thought possible, his voice changes too. Yet, it’s far from idealistic. His voice, scratchy and husked from almost two decades of dry wheezing and incessant coughing, does not grow smooth under Chan’s magic. No, instead it grows louder, raspier, and more confidant. In defiance of everything he’s ever endured, more bits of gravel and broken glass are shoved deep down into his throat, puncturing his vocal chords.

His voice becomes a weapon for him through which he can give meaning to everything that he’s endured. He used to be powerless, but all of that has changed.

“I’m better.” Changbin looms over Chan, who lies sprawled upon the grass. Chan’s chest heaves, and Changbin can hear the rattle of his chest, low and uneven as be breathes. He can see the way that he’s lost weight. Not much, but enough to notice that his body is different beneath his fingers.

At night, Changbin is awoken with the sound of coughing, but it is not his own chest that aches.

“And you’re sick now.” Changbin sinks to his knees, spilling the fruit that he’d gathered from the crook of his arm onto the mossy floor.  

Chan makes no motion to move from where he lies on the ground. His expression is placid, as if he’d expected this conversation, but could never rehearse a suitable answer. The silence between them scratches Changbin’s skin like sharp brambles.

Finally, he speaks, “this always happens. I’ll get better in time.” Then, Chan’s gaze drifts downward to the fruit, and upward, expectantly, “I’m hungry.”

There are no words exchanged between them. Changbin moves Chan’s body so that he’s sitting upward. His back is propped up against Changbin’s chest. Changbin wraps his arms around Chan’s middle, and slowly begins to peel away the thick orange-red skin of a fruit that looks like mango but tastes like banana.

Without question, Changbin takes pulpy bits of fruit between his fingers and presses them to Chan’s mouth. Chan accepts them, chewing slowly. Only then does Changbin take a bite of fruit for himself.

After all of the fruit is eaten, Changbin breaks the comfortable silence between them. 

“If we leave here, together…Can you live outside?” He doesn’t remember much from biology class. However, he can remember an experiment conducted in one of his classes. Two potted pea plants, one was kept outside, and the other was kept inside near the window. After a few days the plant outside had curled leaves. The vibrant green faded into a sickly yellow.

He doesn’t have to know what Chan is to understand.

“I don’t know,” Chan speaks after a long pause. “It’s been years since I’ve been out.”

Changbin doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know when, but he knows one thing for certain. It’s a promise, and plan smashed into one oversimplified statement “I’ll leave with you.”

“That’s what you want Changbin?”

Words spill from Changbin’s mouth, quickly and earnestly. “It’s not enough for me to not die. I want to live, and I want you to live too.”

“You want to live with me?” Chan’s voice contains a lilt, light and dangerous.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

What happens next pushes the paper-thin boundaries of what he knows to be real and what he knows to be possible. Chan turns in his lap and pushes him down onto the ground. Slowly and softly, his body is cradled and guided by thick earth scented vines.

 The sharp green scent of chlorophyll bursts and permeates the air. A gust of wind whips upward from where they lie, displacing millions of feathery white seed pods. They fill the terrarium as if it were a souvenir globe, and the inside were snowing. They fall into Chan’s hair, and across his eyelashes, and against his lips, making him look even more beautiful.

“You always have to put on a show.”

Chan takes the jest in stride and returns it right back to him. “I wouldn’t if you weren’t so hard to impress.”

“You’re the one who—”

Changbin watches his mouth move, and _feels_ him whisper, “hush,” in the shiver down his spine. He cannot be certain that anything was uttered at all.

Chan’s hand presses against his mouth, but the feeling is anything but stifling. With his other hand, Chan touches his forehead lightly, tracing in a circle. 

Changbin becomes hypnotized by the soft, repetitive touch and the way that Chan looks upon him with fascinated, blown wide eyes.

Pain, sharp and sudden, wells up from the place where Chan touches. It multiplies, and it grows. Makes his chest grow tight and his breath short.

Throat dry, and body heavy, Changbin cannot ask Chan for explanation, or push him away. Chan doesn’t cause him pain. Chan doesn’t cause him harm.  All he can do is read the silent plea in Chan’s eyes, “trust me.”

And so Changbin heeds the plea.

Soft lips brush across his forehead, and something fractures inside of Changbin. A ring of white hot light appears before an endless silhouette of black in his vision, and yet his eyes are wide open.  Visions of people whose names he does not know, and places he’s never been to before flash before him. Every bit of it moves far too fast for him to process any of it, and yet he feels compelled to commit it to memory.

Chan’s voice buzzes softly in his ear, but exists wholly in his mind. “I love you Changbin.”

* * *

 

“What do you see?” Chan’s voice drips into his consciousness like droplets of water sliding from his hair onto the back of his neck.

Changbin still cannot see through the deluge of images that shoot in front of his vision. If he grits is teeth. If he tries very hard, two stand out. First, he sees a boy with a round face and full cheeks. He’s seated at a desk, third row back, second seat from the wall. He wears a perfectly tailored private school uniform. Maybe this is important. “I see someone, maybe our age. He’s at a private school. He got a very poor score on his math exam.”

In complete opposite of the first image…

“There’s someone else. He has long dancer’s legs and a thin frame. He’s got a great smile,” and as soon as he says it, a black wave of sorrow blankets Changbin’s mind. It’s worse, far worse than anything he ever felt at his lowest. “But he’s so sad.”

And it becomes apparent to him as to why. “He’s on a bed and…” The image is something that is tinged with both heat and the cold clammy sensation of discomfort. A man looms over the boy, and fucks into him relentlessly. With each roll of the man’s hips, it becomes abundantly clear that they lack the love that he and Chan have. No, it’s worse than that. They lack the mutual _desire_ that he and Chan have.

“Minho,” Chan breathes a name, and Changbin doesn’t understand how he can gather that based on such a short description.

“I healed him too. A long time ago….” Chan’s voice sounds distant now, as if Changbin’s head has been thrust underwater. Is it distressing for Chan to hear about others that left the glass dome? Does he need someone to comfort him? Changbin isn’t certain. His mind has left his body, and he exists somewhere close by, but so far from Chan.

He’s never claimed to understand Chan’s magic, but he knows in his heart that they are bound to one another now.

He knows that he does not regret it at all.

Chan reassures him in a voice that is soft yet authoritative, “what else?”

“The ninth district of Songpa…” He’s never seen a space like this in real life. Harsh yellow lighting shine down on row after row of plants in shallow containers. Flowers, fruits, and vines spring forth from them and spill onto the floor. This space is one in which Chan could not only live, but thrive. “That’s where we’re going to go. Somehow, they’re going to lead us there.”

* * *

 

“We’ll leave when the moon is high. Alright?” Chan’s voice, usually calm and certain, is tinged with something anxious and uneven as if he does not trust himself.

“Make sure to pack well,” Changbin accompanies this statement with a playful jab to Chan’s ribs.

“I just don’t know what to bring.” Changbin feels infinitely better about their hastily made plans when laughter creeps back into Chan’s voice. “I only get one carry on.”

The fuzzy, feather like florets displaced from the trees continue to swirl around them like snow. Pollen tickles at his nose. Makes his cheeks burn hot, and his palms damp with sweat. Anxiety comingles with the effects of the pollen and makes his chest grow tight not with sickness, but anticipation.

The thought of simply waiting for the high moon becomes unbearable. The thought of having an inch of space between himself and Chan, torturous.

There is really only one thing to do to kill the time.

Things have changed between them. He knows this when he takes Chan’s hand and steadies him as they walk. He knows this when he peels fruit for Chan to eat. Things have changed since their first time too. Back then, uncertainty crept into their touches. Chan wiped his skin clean like a slate, but now Changbin is ready to have it all torn away and displayed for him. Peel back the flesh, and the muscle, and the bone and leave nothing but his scarred soul.

He takes Chan’s face between his hands kissing him firmly, and allowing the fire to build slowly. He has nothing to demand of Chan, and everything to admire. Chan has already given him everything, so when Changbin dips his tongue inside his mouth he still yields to Chan. Tracing the roof of his mouth and grazing his lips with his teeth, Changbin chases soft moans that are not freely given but earned.

Every cell in his body hums with a frantic energy that threatens to make him combust. Getting undressed in front of Chan is no longer a disjointed action. Now, he peels away their pollen stained clothing with a single motion letting them pool upon the ground. Flecks of golden pollen billow out from the discarded clothes like dust.

Changbin guides them down onto the soft moss. No ivies spring up to catch them, it’s just Changbin and his strength. His hands roam over soft skin, hard muscle, and curve. He touches Chan in this way, because Chan touches him in this way. He learns, and he improves, and makes Chan’s actions his own.

In some ways, it is as if he’s seeing Chan truly for the first time. Has he noticed the small birthmark at the crest of his hip before now? And if so, did he take the time to kiss it? In the past, was it lost on him, the way that Chan’s stomach flutters when Changbin takes his cock into his hand?

Has he heard, all the breathy, needy undertones hidden when name leaves Chan’s lips like a prayer? Two syllables, “Chang-bin,” speak so much to him.

Although Chan allows Changbin free roam of his body, he is anything but passive. Ivies and vines roam his body. Leaves tickle his skin, and weave around him. Leash like vines rip at the stem whenever Changbin moves, and this action release more of the sharp green scent of chlorophyll into the air. Hands fist into his hair. Kisses are stolen, and touches are returned until Changbin takes Chan’s hand into his and pins it above his head.

When it no longer becomes enough to simply touch Chan’s body, he uses his mouth and his tongue. Golden pollen coats Chan’s skin, and the taste is earthy on Changbin’s lips. When the pollen is comingled with spit, it makes his over kissed lips tingle and his tongue warm.

Changbin repeats the path he blazed upon Chan’s body with his mouth, teasing dusky brown nipples until they’re puffy and overstimulated and tracing the angular line of his hipbones with his tongue. Then, he lavishes attention on Chan’s cock, flicking over the tip softly, and then kissing lightly.

“Stop teasing,” and hearing this from Chan is so satisfying. It’s far more satisfying than getting a fitted sheet folded on the first go or having exact change. To see Chan undone by his own hands, and to see the way that their dynamic has changed so much and still fits together so well... Chan could’ve picked anyone, but he picked him. Chan is unguarded, and so Changbin can be too.

Channgbin smiles against Chan’s cock, sly and devilish. “I’m showing you my gratitude. Accept it.”

“Is it gratitude—” Changbin gleefully interrupts Chan by taking the tip of Chan’s cock into his mouth and takes as much of him into his mouth as he can slowly. “Without humility?”

Changbin doesn’t respond. Chan loves him. Chan found something within him and brought it out, and so he must love that in him too.

The skin of Chan’s cock feels impossibly soft in his mouth. He can feel every twitch, and every pulse, and if this were really, truly about giving gratitude, he’d let Chan finish this way. But Changbin has been tugged in dual directions, overindulgence and deprivation, for a lifetime. The desire to simply choose a path is too tempting.

Usually when they do this, long fluted flowers grow near them. Chan will reach down, pluck one, and use the slick nectar as lubricant. No such flowers appear now. He could ask Chan, and he knows that Chan would provide, but he’s selfish.

Changbin pushes Chan’s knees to his chest. He allows spit to pool in his lower lip, and watches with enamored fascination as the viscous fluid drips from the corner of his mouth across Chan’s hole. First, he smears the liquid across Chan’s skin, testing his hole. Then, he buries himself between Chan’s legs once more.

He licks a long stripe from Chan’s hole to his tailbone, the action causing Chan to jolt against him.

“What the—”

“Trust me.”

Chan fires right back. “Your gratitude is strange.”

“My gratitude feels great.” Changbin repeats this action, licking in a long stripe, and then focuses on the hole, pressing with his tongue and testing the skin with varying pressure. This earns him a range of reactions, from soft moan to choked whine from Chan, and all of it drives Changbin crazy.

“It’s so good Changbin,” and soft, barely there whimpers of, “more.”

  He presses into Chan, over and over again until the skin is pliant, and when this happens, Changbin replaces his tongue with his fingers. With the crook of his digits, and the softest of caress, he touches Chan over and over again. He does this until he hurts with how badly they both ache for one another, and waiting is no longer an option.

“Chan,” Changbin moves up Chan’s body, latches onto his ear, and applies soft pressure with his lips, and his teeth. “Can I show you something?”

“Please.” For the first time, Chan seems uncomfortable in the terrarium’s stifling heat. His skin is flushed pale, and his cheeks blush with soft pink. The same shade is repeated upon his chest like a rose colored coda.

Changbin enters him slowly, draping his body over Chan’s. Chan wraps his legs around his waist, and Changbin loops his arms underneath Chan’s.  Effortlessly, Changbin rises from the moss, and lifts Chan up from the ground.

Protest rises from Changbin’s body. The muscles in his legs are not used to strain. His arms have never carried such a burden, but they were made for this.

Short clipped nails dig into the skin of his neck and his shoulder as Chan clings to him, holding him tight and pulling him somehow closer. Chan’s lips slots over Changbin’s, and doesn’t let him breathe.

 Let him drown for all he cares.

When the kiss is finally broken, Changbin searches Chan’s features for signs of pain.

What he finds is infinitely more satisfying.

 Serenity is something he’s never known Chan to possess. Always at sharp attention, always ready for anything at a moment’s notice. Now? Half lidded eyes compliment a soft half grin. His body is supple in Changbin’s grasp.

Because of this, they fit into each other as if they were made for each other. In slow, disjointed movements, Changbin rocks his hips up into Chan. Grasp firm on his ass, he rolls Chan’s hips down onto his cock.  Chan’s body accepts him so easily and pulls him back in before he can properly pull out. Needy and uncontrolled, it makes Changbin rut into him in futile motions that show just how exposed he truly is.

“Thank you,” Changbin’s breath is rapid and uneven. Every muscle in his body is pushed to the limit. Yet, his voice is calm and unwavering. “For making my body this way.”

“I didn’t do that much.” Chan’s grin is sheepish, his voice breathy. He purses his lips as if he’s just been gifted the very first inclination what embarrassment may be.

There’s more to be said, but all of this is done with a viscous slowness that ignores the darkening sky beyond the glass and suggests that they have all of the time in the world. Slowness of touch and responsiveness of bodies, they’re the kind of poignant reactions brought about by a vague vision, and a last-ditch effort at living. If his body is nineteen years old, he was born a few weeks ago when he vomited up green mucous in the moss.

“I love you,” and Changbin does not know why it has taken him this long to say it.

* * *

 

Time has always been strange and nebulous here in the jar. Now? Even moreso. When he spills deep inside of Chan, and Chan onto his stomach, the sky is jet black. The moon, high. The place between his eyes where Chan kissed him feels tender.

Urgency creeps into every missed button and hastily pulled on garment as they help one another dress. When they’re finished, Chan turns to him and asks, “do you know what to do?”

“I think so.” He catches Chan’s gaze, and his nervous smile fades into an expression he can’t even describe. Hopeless and hopeful are knit into one emotion. “No idea.” Chan said they’d go, and so he assumed that they _would._

Chan pulls Changbin into a tight embrace so that they’re chest to chest. Heart to heart. Maybe even soul to soul. When he whispers into Chan’s ear, “don’t worry, you’ll do great,” there isn’t a tinge of worry or concern in his voice.

Chan’s lips, soft and full of promise meet Changbin’s forehead. Then, the world goes black.

* * *

 

When he opens his eyes again, the world of green velvet moss and jewel toned flowers are gone, and replaced by a blood toned hue that strips color away from everything and bathes it in red.  The open sky is replaced by confined space, four walls, and a ceiling and floor to close him in.

A row of yellow buttons adorns one side of the box. Just being in this room makes his head feel dizzy and his stomach drop as if they were going downward….

For a moment, Chan isn’t beside him. He gropes fitfully through the red until his hands collide with the crumpled and irregular shape of something undeniably human. “Chan,” Changbin breathes, but his relief is short lived. Chan’s body is slumped against the wall.

“I’m okay. Just tired.”

* * *

 

Chan doesn’t weigh heavy upon his back, but heavy upon his conscious.

Changbin has had a lifetime of worst possible outcomes. He’s gone through every side effect and every complication. He’s the rare case, the one in one thousand. So, it makes his temples throb and his chest tight with anxiety when he steps off the elevator and there are no thick metal doors with air tight encoding. There are no retina scanners or finger print readers. There are no armed guards waiting to take the treasure that Changbin has just stolen out from the nose of some unseen force.  

There is only the soft pressure of vines crawling down his chest as he moves. As he walks through the streets, they assure him that Chan is still with him.  

He rarely went out into the city before, and never at night when he did, but he knows from television and movies that Neo-Seoul is a city that is never this quiet. Yet the streets are empty, without so much as the wind to whip around the sharp corners of buildings and blow through the streets.

“The city’s nice, huh Chan?” Uncertainty blossoms on his back in the sweat dampened place where the bulk of Chan’s weight is carried and it tessellates with blind acceptance. Changbin wears the mismatched emotions proudly. His feet _just_ know where to go.  

Past the plaza, crystal gardens, and backlit statues, Changbin can feel the curve of a smile against his neck, and it makes it all okay. Then they go down the winding walkway into the sub level of the city. Then they go lower still, into the oldest part of the city near the ground.

“But I know these parts.” Chan’s voice sounds fragmented.

Broken glass littered across the sidewalk crunches underfoot like fresh fallen snow. He can hear the warble of alarms, and the angry cry of the jilted. Neon slices through the smog and covers everything in a sickly yellow glow.  The smell of ozone is thick in the air alongside asphalt and urine. But despite all of these dirty, visceral signs of life, there isn’t another human in sight.

Down an alley, and down another one, until Changbin stands upon a garbage covered stoop. He pounds on the door once. Twice. Chan shifts against him, raps against the door meekly.

When there is no answer, he tries again, and again.

His arm is raised mid rap when it opens with a _creek_ and a _lurch._ They’re greeted by one of the boys from Changbin’s vision, the one that Chan recognized as Minho. There isn’t much of his face shown behind the doorframe and the slightly wedged door, but the smile that Changbin saw in his vision is gone, replaced by a sullen frown. “Do you mind? I’m with someone.”

Chan shifts against his back once more, peeking over Changbin’s shoulder. Just like that, Minho’s expression rapid cycles from anger, to confusion, hurt, excitement, and then something that almost looks like joy. “Chan?”

“Hey,” and it’s the only time he’s ever heard Chan truly at a loss for words. He’s just as scared, and just as confused as Minho.

In the disarray, Minho forgets to keep the door held shut. Long bare legs and a silken robe that ends just below the crest of his hip is exposed. The interior of the bedroom can be seen now too. The lighting is dim, but what Changbin sees is unmistakable. On the bed, in a mussed school uniform, sits the other boy from his vision.

“Who are you?” Changbin’s voice is shaky, turns three syllables into a half dozen.

The boy does the same, “Jisung.”

“Okay Jisung,” serendipity is a word for fools. Good luck is just a side effect, albeit a little bit better than the rest. It’s like the tingly sensation on your scalp when you get a fresh push of morphine, but right now Changbin is addicted. Addicted to serendipity. “You’re gonna take us to the ninth district.”

* * *

 

 The air here tastes like mildew. There is no fruit to eat, just whatever sealed food they pull out of the bunker. Jisung is a boundless force of energy. Changbin isn’t certain what is worse, the fact that he can match him ear flick for nipple pinch in annoyance, or the fact that Jisung does it all to conceal a deep confusion and sorrow.

Minho disappears for days and weeks on end.

The lights in nonessential rooms only work from 7 in the morning until two or three in the afternoon, and he hasn’t yet figured out how patch into any substations to remedy this.

 Changbin wouldn’t trade any of it for the world because the western chamber contains the world itself. Protected by encrypted locks and from the outside, and wide open from the inside, rests a garden infinitely uglier and less bountiful than the terrarium. Bare concrete floors hold row after row of shallow dirt in elevated containers. From those containers, meek vegetables, dwarf vines of ivy, and sparse buds, yet to bloom.

Yet in this room holds promise.

When he enters the room, Chan stands near one of the raised containers. When they first met, Changbin took for granted Chan’s strength. Now? To see him stand is nothing short of a miracle.

But defiance is in their nature. He’d like to believe it’s kind of _their_ thing. Chan grows stronger each and every day under the fluorescent lamps that imitate the sun, and the fine mist piped in from purified filters from far above.

Changbin wraps his arms around Chan from behind. Has to stand on the very tips of his toes to reach him. But no act of kindness is unpunished, so Changbin blows a raspberry onto the soft patch of skin where neck meets shoulder and the stretched neckline of his sweater dips down low.

As if to remind Changbin of his place, Chan finds strength that he hasn’t exhibited since they left. He whips his body around and gets Changbin’s head underneath his arm. Holding him firmly, he turns backwards so that Changbin is facing the beds.

“Look Changbin. We’ll have flowers soon.” Chan releases him. Their lips brush softly, and they readjust into the kind of soft and natural touches that are so easy to indulge in when it is just the two of them.  

“What kind?” Is the question spoken out loud. “What meaning?” Is the implicit question between them.

Chan’s response is simple, “see for yourself.”

Somehow, Changbin knows just what he should do. Changbin has seen Chan do this many times before, and so mimicking him is easy. Changbin opens his palm flat in front of the bud, closes it, and opens it once again. The bud disappears from the leaves, and reappears in Changbin’s open palm. The surface of his skin is warm as he watches the bud bloom rapidly into a brilliant shade of yellow. However, the blossoming process is not halted.

“Taraxacum,” Chan notes as he watches the flower bloom.

“It’s a dandelion Chan,” Changbin quips.

Time marches forward and the brilliant dandelion sun is replaced with a wispy, seed pod moon.

“These have meanings too?” Changbin asks. “Say things we don’t have courage for?”

“Of course,” Chan responds as Changbin’s raises the bud to Chan’s mouth. “Faithfulness, happiness, hope.”

“All of those things?”

Chan blows the florets into the air and watches them scatter among the low garden beds. “Yeah, Changbin.” Feathery white pods, far more than should come from a single blossom, whirl around them and fill the hydroponic garden. They fall into Chan’s hair, and across his eyelashes, and against his lips, making him look even more beautiful than he already does. “All of them.”

 

* * *

 


End file.
